


angel song laughter

by halfwheeze



Series: Bucky Barnes Bingo 2019 (Round 1) [1]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Boys in Skirts, Interventions brought to you by Wanda, Jealousy, M/M, Misunderstandings, Pietro in a Skirt, This Fic is a Blender and Canon is a Smoothie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-06
Updated: 2019-04-06
Packaged: 2020-01-05 13:15:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18366749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfwheeze/pseuds/halfwheeze
Summary: Pietro Maximoff has the laugh of an angel. He carries himself quickly and yet so gracefully, laughs with his entire body, smiles with his entire face, and he's maybe the prettiest little thing that Bucky has ever seen.He is also egregiously unavailable, but Bucky can live with that. He can.





	angel song laughter

**Author's Note:**

> This is a fill for the Bucky Barnes Bingo! It fills square K1: Misunderstandings. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

There aren't many people on this world that can make the former Winter Soldier nervous. He doesn't normally feel the need to hide himself away from social interaction, just standing sentry as other people speak to him and for him and generally not needing to say a word to the contrary unless something truly provides him some inconvenience. Even if he doesn't always feel the comradely emotions that come naturally to the other Avengers, there's still the idea that Steve, at the very least, has his best interests in mind. Bucky hadn't let Steve tear apart his team for those interests, had mended things with the Iron Man himself instead of providing Steve the opportunity to tear himself apart again. 

But, being as there are only a few people in the world that manage to make the Winter Soldier even slightly nervous anymore, it's only natural that three of those few people call the tower that Bucky lives in their home. 

The first is Pepper Potts, and he fears her not because of any power she exerts, but because of that which she does not. She has both Tony Stark and Steve Rogers at her romantic beck and call, James Rhodes as a close personal friend and adviser, and she chooses to not use any of it. She could take apart the world without lifting a finger, and Pepper Potts does nothing of the sort. She smiles at Bucky every time she sees him, calls him Sergeant Barnes and sends him on his way (or offers him a cup of tea with a penchant for gossiping with him about people he does not know). He thinks he would commit egregious acts of violence for her, even if she would never ask. 

The second is Wanda Maximoff, who has magic enough to let her manipulate the mind of anyone she wants. She has made apologies and promises to never do it again, has gone through training to make it easier for her to control her craft, but she still terrifies Bucky a little bit. She has nothing on her brother, though. 

Pietro Maximoff has the laugh of an angel. He carries himself quickly and yet so gracefully, laughs with his entire body, smiles with his entire face, and he's maybe the prettiest little thing that Bucky has ever seen. He came back from the dead with some fancy healing machine that Tony designed with Rhodey, Bruce Banner and some other doctor - Helen Cho, the one who helped design the machine that got rid of the trigger words as well - and that's a power in itself. Anyone who wasn't enhanced, Tony says, definitely would not have survived the shooting as well as the machine, and Bucky doesn't know how to thank anyone for Pietro's survival. He would have never known Pietro without the work of Tony Stark, and he thinks about that every single day. 

But, it's not like he can say anything to Pietro. The boy is only twenty five, and even if that's physical only a few years younger than Bucky, it feels like a few centuries. And anyway, he's... Pietro is too good. He's sarcastic, has the kind of mouth on him that makes the 1930's in Bucky want to cover his ears so his mama doesn't wash his mouth out with soap, but he's still so good on the inside. He'll rant about global warming, about the humanitarian crisis in other countries, and he's the most forward person on news that Bucky knows. 

It doesn't help that Bucky knows that Pietro likes men; he's very vocal in interviews as well as he is when he and Bucky are having conversations on the couch at three in the morning when neither of them can sleep. Steve, a light sleeper on his best days, laughs at Bucky when he comes back into their shared floor smiling. He knows how Bucky feels, of course. He can still see it all over Bucky's face, Winter Soldier or no. 

He comes out this morning and nearly chokes on his spit: Pietro is at the table with the rest of the Avengers for breakfast, except... Well, he's wearing a skirt. And sitting in Clint's lap. And Bucky may be half way to punching one of his closest friends in the face before Natasha cuts him off mid step, grabbing his arm and twisting him into an alcove off of the main room with feline grace that drags him off of kilter even if he doesn't want to go. Natasha pushes him against the wall and keeps him there with a blade at his shoulder, which is fair. 

"What?" he barks out, gritting his teeth. Natasha raises an unimpressed eyebrow. 

"This is Pietro's first time being comfortable enough to wear skirts in front of us. You do not enact any violence right now, jealous or not, идиот. You do not make him uncomfortable, and for the sake of everyone here, you don't get Clint's blood on light blue fabric. Just don't. Tell him he looks pretty and move on," Natasha commands, and as much as it burns in Bucky's throat, he nods. He can move on, if he must. If Pietro will be happy. She allows him out of the alcove by making the knife disappear, tucking it into one of her many pockets. Even in regular clothes, Natasha has more pockets than anyone he knows. 

“I like the skirt,” he says to Pietro, though he can’t make himself make eye contact. He smiles though, which he considers a step up. He doesn’t catch the flash of disappointment on Pietro’s face, nor the way that the speedster slinks out of Clint’s lap, putting himself directly in Bucky’s way. The soldier is getting tired of people getting in his way, but he still can’t make himself get angry with Pietro. He looks so pretty. 

"You do not like it?" Pietro says, his accent thick and adorable on his tongue. Bucky smiles at him softly, tilting his head forward, but making sure not to be too outright in his affection for this young man who is obviously seeing Clint. 

"I like the skirt, мышка," Bucky replies, his smile turning into something sad. "But it isn't my place," he admits, turning to walk past Pietro, who does not try to stop him again. Pietro, however unfortunately, will at least understand why Bucky has to keep his distance from complimenting the other man now, even if it will make Pietro keep his distance in other ways. As much as Bucky wants him around, as much as Bucky always wants Pietro around, with his light and his laughter and all of his newness, it is not what is meant to be. It's evident in the shade of Pietro's silence, the way that he doesn't reach out a hand for Bucky as he so often does, and Bucky can already feel the loss taking home in his chest. 

There's a reason why Bucky cannot keep things and people that are made of light. He is not made to hold that against him, and anyone in the universe can tell. 

He goes through the motions of getting his tea and getting his food, but he does not stay in the dining room with the rest of the Avengers, nor make his way to the breakfast nook that he and Steve and Sam occasionally pack themselves into. It's not uncommon for him to disappear into his and Steve's apartment all day, not uncommon for him to disappear at all, because Bucky oftentimes wants to disappear more than he wants to be a person. That's beside the point though. He had a good reason to be afraid. 

The next time he reappears from his floor, Wanda finds him in the gym less than a minute after his entrance. He looks up at the ceiling to silently curse Friday, gritting his teeth as he prepares himself for the shovel talk that will certainly come from the woman who could take him apart into shards. Instead, she sits down on the training mat and makes a gesture for him to join her. He does so with a look of overt confusion, to which she hums. 

"My brother, as near and dear to me as he is, is also an idiot," she says apropos of nothing, laying down on the mat and gesturing for Bucky to do the same. He does, crossing his arms behind his head and looking at the ceiling with her, which seems to go up and up and up forever, even if Bucky knows it's only the equivalent of three floors. Clint had asked for the extra space up there for tightrope practice, which Tony had taken as a challenge. It's funny to watch Bruce watch Clint up there, even if he's constantly on the edge of looking as if he's about to go green. 

"So am I," Bucky admits after a few moments, because of course he hadn't said anything to Pietro before it was virtually confirmed that he was not available. Wanda looks at him, a slow scan that Bucky can practically feel, before she nods. 

"You are. But only because you cannot see how much my brother is obviously... what do Americans say? Head over heels? For you, that is. He has had feelings for you for months," Wanda says casually, as if she is not dropping a bomb directly into Bucky’s lap and waiting for it to go off. This has to be a joke. “I’m inside of his head, you know. We’ve been like this my entire life, depending on each other for everything, even before I was given an expansion on my powers by HYDRA. He was a part of me before anything else.” 

Bucky doesn’t know what to do with this admittance. As far as he knows, perhaps only Clint knows this much about the twins. Bucky feels very much like he is intruding on a private club, even if this feels as much like an invitation as anything else. 

“And if I don’t want him back?” Bucky offers, even if it’s so obviously not true. Wanda laughs, twinkling bells to her brother’s angel song, and she stands from his side easily, using a bit of her magic to float her onto her feet. 

“That is not something I am worried about, James Barnes. Just as I am not worried about you hurting him, even if you are both idiots. You will treat him right,” Wanda says, her eyes twinkling, and then she’s gone. 

“Friday,” Bucky says to the ceiling, “Did that just happen?” Friday makes a noise of amusement that a program should not be capable of before answering. 

“Yes, it did, Sergeant. Mister Maximoff is on his way, I believe,” Friday replies, and then Pietro is on the mat with Bucky, taking up the place that his sister had been. He’s still wearing a skirt, which Bucky doesn’t know how he runs in, but now with a sweater that looks like it belongs to Wanda, which almost makes Bucky wince. Pietro and Wanda usually steal each other’s clothes when they’re hurt or uncomfortable, and Bucky hates to have caused that, if he did. Instead of speaking, Pietro lays down, leaning against Bucky until he seems to collect himself together. 

“You really thought I was fucking the old man?” Pietro asks, and Bucky can’t control the way that he chokes on his own spit. He has to sit up because he’s laughing so hard, knocking Pietro from his place leaning on his flesh shoulder, and eventually, Pietro is laughing as well. He’s sitting up to lean on Bucky, sitting up and getting closer to Bucky, sitting up and moving so that he’s sitting on Bucky’s lap, steadily set with his hands on Bucky’s shoulders. Bucky’s eyes are wide and he’s barely breathing, just looking and looking and looking. Pietro smiles down at him and kisses Bucky softly, like he means the world, and Bucky cradles his hips between his hands like glass, like a breakable thing, like an angel. 

He holds the young man with the angel song laughter and feels the light burning within him, safe and home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it!
> 
> If you did, tell me in the comments, leave a kudo, or send me an ask @halfwheeze on ao3!
> 
> You can also prompt me in the comments or on the previously mentioned tumblr!


End file.
